Bessie Liu

<div id="highlights-block_62deccb157938" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Ex-meta employees and founders of Aptos Labs secure $150 million in funding</li>
 <li>Halborn raises its first venture capital round, securing $90 million to power through the bear market</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Over $300 million of funding was poured into crypto companies this past week.



Ex-Meta Platforms staff raised $150 million in funding for Aptos Labs, a blockchain startup that wants to make transactions faster and cheaper. The Palo Alto based company was founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Chin, former Meta employees who worked on cryptocurrency project Diem, which fell apart earlier this year due to regulatory difficulties.&nbsp;



The startup had already reached <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unicorn.asp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unicorn status</a> in March, and this new funding is speculated to almost double its valuation.&nbsp;



Blockchain security company Halborn also raised significant capital for its Series A led by Summit Partners.&nbsp;



“We are fully bootstrapped and raised $0 until this Series A,” Rob Behnke, co-founder of Halborn told Blockworks.&nbsp;



The $90 million that the company has received will be used to “launching multiple blockchain security automation products for the world of Web3 builders,” Behnke said. Adding that despite bear market conditions, “we&#8217;re also planning on hiring another 100 people over the next 12 months.”



“There have been a number of challenging crypto headlines in the market of late. In our view, this will result in a necessary separation of the “good ideas” from the “bad”,” Matt Hamilton, a managing director at Summit Partners, told Blockworks.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“We believe companies that add value for their customers will get rewarded and survive; those that are adding no value or engaging in pure speculation probably will not,” Hamilton said.</blockquote>



Halborn was not the only company to have raised a successful Series A. Decentralized crypto exchange Hashflow also <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/hashflow-raises-25-million-from-jump-crypto-wintermute-and-gsr/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> that it had successfully secured $25 million from multiple venture capitalists including Jump Crypto, Wintermute and GSR, bringing its valuation to $400 million.



This new capital will allow Hashflow to “aggressively onboard new market makers to maximize the liquidity on our platform for our users,” Varun Kumar, the CEO said.



Other notable raises this week include:



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>Developer of an AI engine for NFT content recognition, Optic — raised an $11 million seed round last week. Co-founder Andrey Doronichev told Blockworks that “we want to become a public infrastructure for all the companies out there&#8230;we’re building a layer of infrastructure that watches every token come into every chain.”</li><li>Meow, a crypto yield offering startup, closed a $22 million Series A led by Tiger Global.</li><li>Game-to-earn company Fitchin raised a $3.5M seed round and onboards Joe McCann, founder of crypto fund, Asymmetric as an official advisor.</li></ul>



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Funding Roundup: Some $300 Million Poured into Crypto Projects Last Week

<div id="highlights-block_62d9a272067fc" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Hashflow plans to “aggressively onboard new market makers to maximize the liquidity on its platform”</li>
 <li>Returning investors include Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital Partners, LedgerPrime, and Balaji Srinivasan</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Decentralized crypto exchange Hashflow has raised a $25 million Series A venture round, bringing the company’s valuation to $400 million.&nbsp;



Investors included Jump Crypto, Wintermute and GSR. The raise follows the company drumming up a $3.2 million seed round in April last year.&nbsp;



Hashflow is known to have a “bridgeless” cross-chain swap protocol. Unlike other prominent decentralized finance (DeFi) trading platforms that use automated market makers (AMM) to facilitate trades, Hashflow allows users to request quotes from an entity that does price discovery off-chain.&nbsp;



This model gives less volatile price offerings compared to traditional AMMs Varun Kumar, CEO of Hashflow told Blockworks.



The DeFi company hopes to use the newly raised capital to craft a more-seamless trading experience by bringing more trading products onto the Hashflow platform. It also has plans to expand its engineering and marketing teams.



Kumar said that Hashflow will soon be deployed on Solana. This will allow cross chain swaps between Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains and non-EVM chains.&nbsp;



Bridge protocols have <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bridge-protocols-race-to-win-consumer-trust/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">struggled to attract users</a> in the bear market. Multichain, one of the largest cross-chain bridge protocols saw its value plummet from $7 billion to $2 billion in less than half a year.



Despite these market conditions, Kumar says that Hashflow is “well-capitalized and actively hiring.” His main priority moving forward will be to “aggressively onboard new market makers to maximize the liquidity on its platform.”



“We intend to continue to build, scale, and hire after this raise,” Kumar said.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.